Maximo Gomez

Maximo Gomez (18 November 1836-17 June 1905) was a Major-General of Cuba during the Ten Years' War and the Cuban War of Independence.

Biography
Maximo Gomez was born in Mani, Dominican Republic in 1836, and he served in the Dominican army during the Dominican War of Independence against Haiti. He later joined the Spanish Army, and he became a cavalry captain before arriving in Cuba. He fought alongside the Spanish forces in the Dominican Restoration War, and he moved his family to Cuba after the Dominican rebels defeated the Spanish. In 1868, however, he left the Spanish Army and joined the Cuban rebels during the Ten Years' War, and he trained the Cuban rebels in the Spanish fashion. He trained the rebels how to launch machete charges on foot, and he led an 1871 campaign to clear Guantanamo of Spanish forces, and, after Ignacio Agramonte's death in 1873, Gomez took over the Cuban army in Camaguey. During the 1880s, he organized Cuban patriotic clubs in Puerto Rico, and he was prepared to lead a revolt there against Spanish rule if the time came. He rose to the rank of Generalissimo of the Cuban Army, and he was known for his use of Fabian tactics such as burning down plantations to harass the Spanish occupiers. He refused to join forces with the Spanish in fighting off the United States during the Spanish-American War, and he retired to a villa outside of Havana after the war's end. He refused the presidential nomination that was offered to him in 1901, and he died at his villa in 1905.